Because of Obama's terrible debate performance we are staring a Romney presidency in the face and I am trying to come to terms with the possibility that after living through Bush/Cheney, Mitt Romney's mug will be on the T.V. screen for eight years. My gut is so sore from thinking about a failed Obama and a new Romney presidency that my health may be failing. So I am changing gears and adjusting. Certainly I will cancel my cable subscription. I am also threatening to move to Canada but I already have a house an hour from the border so I'm not sure that moving sixty miles North achieves all that much.

Romney isn't that dumb, or not dumb enough to launch a dumb riff about airplane windows not going up and down when he's standing right in front of his wife who has just had a near death experience on a smoke filled jet at thirty thousand feet. That's not even not dumb, but worse. Notice she was not looking at him and she was definitely not even not smiling. I hope Mitt wasn't dumb enough to try to collect on his marriage benefits that night.

So what's Romney---the world's walking definition of a smart business guy---trying to achieve by appearing to be dumb and not even dumb, but beyond our consciousness of dumb, a kind of Kenyan dumb---inhabiting an alterative reality beyond the dumb of our own shores?  

Mitt Romney, our Christian President, Barack Obama, is as we speak being burned in effigy by angry Muslims across the world. In a flag draped coffin, no less. Don't you want to jump in with both feet and claim once again that Obama is coddling them? Pretty effective isn't it? Where is your outrage that our country has been demeaned and insulted by the angry Muslims? Perhaps you might want to have your five sons enlist in the military and go over to Pakistan and elsewhere to protect some American real estate---you might actually own some of it. What about you, perhaps you should personally visit the area, tell them again why they shouldn't be coddled. And by the way, you might mention that we won't tolerate any such actions as burning our President in effigy. Cat got your tongue? It's tough being out there in the ring, isn't it? Any of those white towels left over from the plan level at the Ritz Carleton?

In my opinion it's way too early to conclude that Romney's fund raising video is a "game changer". While Romney's comments are reprehensible, the media coverage so far does not parse the victims to include the 50% of Republicans in red states who are low income and don't pay taxes---but distributes 100% of these folks to the Obama camp. Thus, on the media surface, Romney was correct. A lot of people pay no federal income taxes and they all vote for Obama. What else is new?

I am not impressed by the way Democrats are addressing the video. Democrats have not properly responded to the "47% pay no taxes" charge in the past and I can't see that their response to this video so far has improved their messaging. So to turn this video into a game changer, Democrats need to improve their attacks. "Romney wrote off the 47%" doesn't, imo, move the needle.